Students from 300 Schools Pledge to Walk Out of Class in ‘Stand for the Second’ Event

Students from 300 schools have pledged to walk out of class May 2 in support of a pro-gun “Stand for the Second” event.

“Stand for the Second” was organized by Will Riley, who is a senior in New Mexico’s Carlsbad High School.

Riley is not a gun owner, but he is dedicated to ideals and freedoms central to America’s founding. He penned a Washington Examiner op-ed in mid-April to explain:

For the past month, Americans have been subjected to wall-to-wall cable news coverage of a well-orchestrated campaign to dismantle the Second Amendment. This campaign, organized and funded by national gun control groups, has exploited a handful of grieving teens from the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting tragedy.

As a high school senior in Carlsbad, N.M., who supports gun rights, I am disgusted by how these students and their adult handlers are trying to define my generation. My generation is not anti-Second Amendment. My generation does not agree with retired Justice John Paul Stevens that the Second Amendment should be repealed.

In fact, millennials are more pro-gun than our parents are. It’s time the media starts hearing from the millions of young Americans who respect the Constitution and recognize that the Second Amendment is fundamental to our protection and safety, as both individuals, and as a nation.

The “Stand for the Second” website is emblazoned with these words from Thomas Jefferson: “Al tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

Riley is asking pro-Second Amendment students to refuse to remain silent. He suggests all student participants walk out of their schools at 10:00 a.m.